They wouldn't have hired him, of course. We think. We hope. He's not exactly brimming with experience, and if there's one thing the Magic need, it's a GM who knows what he's doing. (The whole "get Dwight Howard some complementary pieces" thing. That's kind of important right now.) We'd like to believe the "mutual interest" was a publicity stunt, along the lines of floating Jerry Sloan and Scott Skiles for the coaching job, even though they're precisely the types to drive Howard far far away.

The only conceivable reason to consider Shaq? He's good friends with Howard, so perhaps the thinking was, give Shaq a figurehead title, let Alex Martins handle the basketball operations (Martins quickly became the most powerful man in the organization after his promotion in December), and Dwight will be happy. In which case the Magic would have been putting all their eggs in the keep-Dwight-Howard basket without addressing the underlying reasons why he's disgruntled, which is pretty much how Orlando got to this fucked point in the first place.